First Person/Opinion:

by Michael Gougis

Comedian Doug Stanhope (one of my all-time favorites) did one of the best sendups I’ve ever heard of something that seemingly every law enforcement agency does, or at least did on a regular basis when I was a daily newspaper and Associated Press reporter. In his “True Stories of The Highway Patrol” routine, Stanhope talks about a hypothetical traffic stop where officers seize two marijuana seeds, calculate the number of plants that could be grown from those seeds, and estimate the value of the seizure in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Point is, in my experience, law enforcement agencies routinely overestimate the value of items they seize. And I’ve been ruminating on that ever since the operation that unearthed a trove of motorcycles in Mexico connected to fugitive Ryan Wedding. An FBI statement said that 62 machines were recovered with an estimated value of $40 million.

OK, time for some math. That means each motorcycle in that collection has to be worth a little more than $645,000. And a quick review of some motorcycle auction sites and a bit of internet research quickly brings the estimated value of the collection into question.

Let’s start with what we can actually put a price tag on. About two-thirds of the way into the grid of motorcycles in the main photo released by the FBI appear to be a couple of Kawasaki ZX-7 racebikes. If the competition numbers on the fairings of the machines are correct, at least one of them appears to be the machine Scott Russell rode to the WorldSBK title and/or one that Doug Chandler rode to the AMA Superbike Championship. We know exactly what those are worth: $70,000 each, because they sold at auction in 2022 for that amount. Not exactly cheap, but nowhere near $645,000.

There’s a Ducati Supermono singles racebike in the photo. Assuming it’s genuine, it’s a sweet machine and definitely collectible. There were only 67 of them made. Still, in 2022, one sold at auction for $165,760. Again, nowhere near $645,000.

Those machines are the ones with provenance that can be traced and verified. When it gets to many of the other machines in the collection, things get a lot less certain.

Former Grand Prix and British Superbike racer Taylor Mackenzie (son of famous racer Niall Mackenzie) did an analysis of one of the bikes seized, a 125cc Grand Prix bike with the number of nine-time World Champion Valentino Rossi on it. In a video on his YouTube channel, Mackenzie points out that the colors on the seized bike are different that the colors of the bikes Rossi actually raced. So is it a Rossi racebike? Maybe, maybe not. There are a lot of replicas, rebuilds, and bitsa bikes for sale on the auction circuit. A tribute to MotoGP World Champion Nicky Hayden Ducati recently sold for $288,000 at auction. The bike, a Desmosedici GP8, was dismantled when purchased from Ducati in 2010 and was re-assembled with a chassis from the middle of the 2008 season, unused engine crankcases, a “race-used” Hayden fuel tank and “other Hayden and original Ducati MotoGP parts, all being acquired at the same time in 2010,” the auction site states. 

In this collection, there are a number of machines that appear to be 500cc two-stroke V-Four racebikes from the 1980s. Again, depending on the provenance, a quick Google search says that such machines would sell for between $85,000 and $250,000. The highest priced two-stroke Grand Prix machine sold at auction in recent years was a 1997 Honda NSR500V, the twin-cylinder Honda produced to prop up the grids with a racebike that privateers could afford. It was never started, still had the original plastic shipping plastic covers on the carburetors, and had a ton of documentation. It sold at auction last year for $267,000. It was billed as the highest price ever paid for a Japanese motorcycle sold at auction. 

It is possible, of course, that individual machines could have changed hands between private parties for more money. But when it comes to public sales, thevintagent.com tracks public auction sales of motorcycles, and on its list of most expensive motorcycles sold at auctions, the highest-priced modern road racing machine is a 2010 Ducati GP10 CS1 ridden by two-time MotoGP World Champion Casey Stoner to victory in at Philip Island and to multiple podium finishes. It came with a certificate of authenticity from Ducati Corse and documented history. It sold for about $320,000 in Monaco in 2012. Just beneath that on the list is a 2011 Ducati Desmosedici GP11 VR2, ridden by Rossi to a third-place finish at Le Mans, again with a certificate of authenticity from Ducati Corse. It sold for $312,500 in the same auction as the Stoner bike. It appears very similar to one of the seized machines, although it is impossible to say with 100 percent certainty that it is the same bike. The point is that MotoGP machines of this vintage sold for far less than that $645,000 that each machine would have to sell for to get to that $40 million mark.

There are more modern MotoGP machines in the collection, with the liveries of Andrea Dovizioso and Jorge Lorenzo and Andrea Iannone. These are harder to get a handle on in terms of value, but it is noteworthy that one of Dovizioso’s machines recently went up for auction. It was one of his Desmosedici GP19 racebikes, the one he rode to wins in Qatar and Austria, and it was authenticated by Ducati Corse. Unusually, it was offered in full running order, with a starter and original factory electronics. In many cases, when a MotoGP bike is sold, the factory removes the ECU. It was expected to get at least $671,000 at auction, but the auction site where it was listed says the bike failed to sell. Aleix Espargaro is selling his 2020 Aprilia RS-GP, complete with electronics but requiring some factory assistance to get it running. It comes straight from Espargaro, who got it from the factory, and it comes with leathers, boots, helmet and gloves used by Espargaro in races in 2020. Due up for auction in February, the sale price estimate is $404,000 to $540,000.

Is there the possibility that there are one or two extremely rare, valuable machines among the seized bikes that are worth several million on their own? Nothing’s impossible, but we can perhaps get some perspective from over in the car world. Seven-time Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton’s F1W04-04 2013 Mercedes AMG-Petronas F1 W04 sold at auction in 2023. It is a race-winning car in Hamilton’s hands, the third-most expensive Grand Prix car ever sold behind two vintage Mercedes racers from the 1950s, and – here’s the real kicker – the only Mercedes F1 car ever “to be sold outside of the Mercedes organization,” the auction website states. Hamilton was 22nd on the list of highest-paid athletes in 2025, with an estimated income of $80 million, and was named the world’s most marketable athlete in 2025 in SportsPro’s marketability rankings – and not for the first time.

And that car sold for $18.8 million.

Again, not cheap, but think of the level of fame of its racer and the scarcity of the vehicle. To even think of getting into the multi-million dollar level for a bike, it seems, it would take something like owning the only Honda or Yamaha factory MotoGP or 500cc Grand Prix racebike in private hands, one that Marquez or Rossi rode to at least one race win, one with an indisputable pedigree, if Marquez or Rossi also were anywhere near as popular as Hamilton, and motorcycle road racing was as popular as Formula One.

Maybe, somewhere, there’s someone who would spend that kind of money on a single collectible racebike, but there’s no evidence of that happening in the world of publicly traded motorcycles. Again, according to thevintagent.com, the most expensive motorcycle ever sold at auction traded hands for $1.32 million.

Valuing a historic racing machine always comes down to one thing in the end – how much will someone actually pay for it? And if the bike isn’t for sale, then its value is an educated guess at best. But based on historic data for actual sales on similar machines (or, in some cases, maybe the actual racebikes seized), it’s really, really hard to see how the motorcycles in the photo released by law enforcement are worth anywhere near $40 million.